Since 1999, Feb. 7 has marked National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, drawing attention to the disproportionate impact of HIV on Black communities.
For ViiV Healthcare—the HIV-focused joint venture between GSK, Pfizer and Shionogi—the day represents a dual opportunity to both celebrate progress and plan next steps, according to Randevyn Pierre, ViiV’s head of national field engagement in external affairs.
“It’s the moment for us to remember those who have contributed so much to this fight to end HIV/AIDS, and it’s an opportunity for us to celebrate how far we’ve come in HIV treatment, advocacy, activism, research and community work, and also to use that as evidence of how far we can go to end HIV,” Pierre said in an interview with Fierce Pharma Marketing.
“Through all of the social drivers of health that Black communities face, specifically in the South, and through a lot of the resource challenges that Black communities face, it’s really important to recognize that HIV continues to be a space where Black folks are overrepresented in the epidemiology,” he continued.
Black Americans make up a larger share of HIV diagnoses and deaths than any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S., despite comprising only 12% of the population, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) data as of 2022.
To combat those trends, ViiV is now “continuing to reimagine the potential of our impact and the tools that we would need at this point in the epidemic to really continue to fight,” Pierre said.
Among the company’s current tools are a network of community liaisons and a slate of cultural programs. The community liaisons are spread across 26 U.S. cities, where they host “immersive learning experiences” to exchange information about local HIV care services and bring in “nontraditional partners and organizations who are not normally at the table for these conversations," per Pierre.
Topics of discussion in those conversations include healthcare hesitancy and the history of HIV, and specifically its impacts on communities of color over time, all with an aim of educating people about ways they can protect against the disease.
ViiV’s cultural programs, meanwhile, target specific groups heavily impacted by HIV to provide information about prevention. “Risk to Reasons,” for one, launched in 2023 and focuses on Black women. According to Pierre, ViiV will “continue to bolster that program and talk through what people’s reasons are for HIV prevention and not focus on the thought or the idea of risk.”
The company will also maintain another of its 2023 launches, “Mother to Son,” which celebrates mother figures and is “specifically tailored for gay and bisexual men of color, to help them understand what their goals and what their resources might be, and to help them think through tough conversations that can help empower them to get on treatment and stay on treatment,” Pierre said.
At the core of ViiV’s advocacy programs is a dedication to improving awareness and education, he said.
“As the only company that is solely focused on HIV, we are invested in making sure that communities have what they need to fight against HIV effectively,” Pierre said. “We don’t just make medicines. We also equip and support communities to understand [their prevention and treatment options] and then to listen to them to see what their concerns are, what they see the barriers as.”
As for how that work will shake out in 2025, Pierre said, “this year is going to be full of taking a step back and thinking about how we can show up even better than we have in the past and continuing to support communities with HIV prevention strategies and approaches that we’ve seen work well and that we’d like to see work even better.”